it’s not our fault our enemies hats us”
So that’s it, is it? Not his policies but his psychoanalysis of the enemy. Sort of like voting against Obama because of his apology tour instead of because he’s a socialist.
Militarists themselves admit the existence if what they call “blowback.” We make ourselves responsible for what our enemies, if they really are such, think of us. Even if they are totally irrational they are predictably irrational, at least to an extent. It could benefit us to plan our foreign policy around their insanity. The alternative is to be content with our righteousness while digging ourselves deeper and deeper in the muck.
Not much is required to trace how intervention begets intervention and war war. WWI gave us WWII, and we crushed the Nazi only for the whack-a-mole Soviets to pop up. The Middle East now is Britain’s fault from WWI, but also ours since WWII, especially as regards Israel. Everyone knows how one man’s war with Iraq led to his son’s war with Iraq.
You can paint whomever we happen to oppose as the bad guys, and that’s easy with the Nazis, commues, and terrorists. But you can’t say we’re exactly defending ourselves, and haven’t been clearly doing so since at least 1812. National security is something more nebulous, and national interest altogether indefinable. Maybe at some point we’ll try again not pushing our interests without regard for what our enemies or potential enemies think, however evil they are. Because even if they’re wrong and we are good guys, it does matter what they think.
Realizing that you will have enemies through no fault of your own (even because of your strengths) is the first requirement.
The second requirement is to realize that the best strategy for preventing war is a very strong defense to not invite attack and a strong defense policy that when attacked you annihilate your attacker to stop him and discourage others.
Paul, and many libertarians fail on these requirements. The result of their philosophy is more war and less freedom - in the long run suffering and servitude.